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вторник, 23 сентября 2014 г.

Mexico Makes Route Tougher for Migrants

By Paulina Villegas and Randal
C. Archibold

TIERRA BLANCA, Mexico — Soon
after crossing from Guatemala into Mexico last week, the group of Honduran
migrants spotted the police swarming the freight train known as “The Beast”
that has dangerously but reliably ferried tens of thousands of people north,
clumped atop and hanging off box cars.

So they walked through bushes
and along riverbanks to avoid detection. And then they walked some more, 10
hours a day for several days, parched and so starved that they grabbed what
fish they could from the streams and fruit from the trees.

“We were hungry so we took an
orange from the tree, and the owners of the house behind it started shooting at
us,” said José Antonio Alvarado, 22, resting here, 400 miles from the
Guatemala-Mexico border, while he waited for a train to depart.

Just a few months ago, migrants
like Mr. Alvarado readily crossed Mexico’s southern border and hopped on nearby
trains heading north. But under pressure from the United States and other
Central American nations, Mexico in recent weeks has taken a rare step toward
stemming the flow of migrants, sweeping them off trains, setting up more
roadway checkpoints and raiding hotels and flophouses where they congregate on
their journey north.

Those actions clearly have not
halted migration, and, as Mr. Alvarado’s group shows, people are still
determined to get on the train, if only farther north.

But the increasing difficulty
of the trek — combined with high temperatures, the brisk pace of the
deportation of Central Americans and a public-relations campaign that warns
people that no visas await them in the United States — is among the factors
that may explain why fewer migrants are now crossing into the southwestern
United States, with a particular decrease in the number of children traveling
alone or with a relative.

Last month, 3,141 children
traveling without a parent were apprehended at the United States-Mexico border,
a 70 percent decrease from June.

White House officials, who just
a few months ago described the migrant surge as a crisis and scrambled to find
detention space, have been careful not to declare the problem resolved, wary of
a surprise influx.

But interviews with migrants,
shelter workers and Central American officials suggest that word has gotten
back to the region that the journey is getting harder and that migrants might
not make it through Mexico. Mexican authorities have deported more than 38,000
Central Americans this year and now regularly send busloads and planes of
detainees back to their countries.

Mr. Alvarado’s group, mostly
Hondurans fleeing deep poverty and dangerous criminal gangs, included only one
child, an 8-year-old boy traveling with a man who identified himself as his
father.

People who work with migrants
here in southern Mexico said that the number of children seeking to cross the
border had fallen considerably. But, they said, additional immigration routes
could open, prompting a new stream.

“They will just find the blind
spots of the immigration officials,” said Consuelo, a woman who works at a
shelter for migrants here in Tierra Blanca. She declined to give her full name
for fear that the police would harass her for helping the migrants. She said
that as many as 700 Central Americans a month were passing through in the
spring, but that last month the number had dropped to about 375.

She and other aid workers said
the retreat from the trains in favor of longer treks by foot would leave the
migrants more vulnerable to gangs as well as to corrupt police officers and
immigration agents. Many of the Central Americans have arrived with foot
injuries.

But Mexican officials,
embarrassed by widely publicized images of trains overloaded with stowaways,
many of them children, promised that “The Beast” would no longer be allowed to
serve as migrants’ main transport north.

Officials said that more than
6,000 people had been removed from freight trains in recent weeks and that in
the near future border guards would run vehicles on the tracks ahead of the
trains to detect people trying to board farther up the line. The tracks will be
renovated to allow the trains to move faster, which might discourage people
from jumping on, and steps will be taken to prevent people from sabotaging the
rails to slow the trains.

Humberto Mayans, the Interior
Ministry official directing the southern border-control effort, told reporters
that the moves were taken to safeguard migrants and reduce the chaos that
ensues when they rush to the tracks. Hundreds have been maimed in falls from
the train, or raped, robbed or killed by criminals who prey on the passengers.

“It’s a strategy of respect for
human rights and protecting the physical well-being of the migrants,” Mr.
Mayans said in a recent radio interview. “In no way will they be allowed to
board the freight train.”

It remains unclear whether
Mexico will be able to sustain its efforts at its southern border; it has
carried out similar operations in the past but not to this extent.

Some opposition politicians
have complained that Mexico is adopting the hard-line approach of the United
States. Government officials respond that the border strategy includes visas
for temporary workers and visitors from Guatemala, and plans for similar
measures for Salvadorans and Hondurans, as part of a larger effort to impose
order on the flow of migration.

But as migrants find ways
around the country’s new barriers, Mexico may find itself, like the United
States, in a prolonged cat-and-mouse game with border crossers.

Tierra Blanca has long been a
jumping-off place for migrants, and a dangerous one. The brutal Zetas crime
gang terrorizes the area, often kidnapping people for ransom under threat of
death and demanding that migrants pay a fee to pass through the area.

Usually two trains pass through
here daily, and shelter operators say they still see dozens of migrants aboard
despite the crackdown farther south. So far, there have been no police raids
here.

Last week, several migrants
tried to board a petrochemical train that had stopped, but they were waved off
by train employees. The migrants were told that the cargo was too dangerous and
that they should wait for the next train that night, which they did.

“No matter how difficult it
gets, the way north, it is always more difficult back home,” said Mr. Alvarado,
who described a life of no work and constant gang threats. “So I will try to
get to the other side no matter what.”

The 8-year-old boy, Carlos Alberto
Cruz Menjivar, arrived in Tierra Blanca with Luis Alberto Cruz, who said he was
the boy’s father, though they did not seem close and it was possible that he
was a smuggler portraying himself as a relative, a common practice.

They took shelter in a small,
dilapidated wooden house owned by an elderly couple who allow migrants to stay
there for 40 pesos a night, about $3. The rooms are strewn with garbage and
animal waste, but Carlos, carrying a tattered backpack, kept a cheery
disposition.

Mr. Cruz said he was traveling
with Carlos to the border so he could send him into Texas. Mr. Cruz said he
hoped Carlos would eventually reunite with his mother, who has been living in
New York for five years.

Mr. Cruz settled under a tree
with a dozen or so other migrants, searching the ground for dropped coins to
buy food as night fell, waiting for the next train.

Facts from History

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YOUTH PEACE PLAN OF GEORGIA

This publication is produced within the framework of the project - ‘‘Support Democratic Participation of Young Women in Building Peace and Stability in Georgia’’ implemented in Georgia by International Network for Civil Development - INCD in partnership with Young Women Experts’ Network for Peace and Security (YWEPS) and with the financial support of the Embassy of Canada through Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI).